After a nice gentle start, two days spent relaxing, eating the occasional steak and having spent an new year a day early with Becky´s new friends Debbie and Rich, we prepare for a 10 day trek around Torres del Paine, a nearby national park. Pain being the operative word.
Becky prepares food rations, kit list and itinerary. I sit back and stare in complete shock.She, having spent the last 3 months doing this type of thing is well into the swing of things. I on the other hand have spent the past 3 months drinking and eating too much, as is required with Christmas, and it takes me the best part of 3 days to catch up with her. She shows me how to pack a rucksack properly (which i still haven`t quite mastered), cook a slap up camp meal with just an onion and packet of `smash´ potato and tell the difference between a juvenile, sub adult and adult condor which fly above us. After her GVI training, i am her first student.
2 days in and after solid rain, we are suffering and Becky`s morale in general is at a low. As we wake and put on our still damp clothes and pack up our still wet tent, she informs me that she is more used to the sun and heat up north. Defeat seems imminent as the day continues in the rain. Setting up camp, we decide to get into the nearest Refugio and get a warm meal and bottle of wine, with my smelly socks drying underneath the table. This decision saves the rest of our trip, as Becky wakes me to say that she sees glimpses of sun (it does exist!) and morale is boosted.
We embark on a walk known as the Q, which involves a complete walk around the circuit of the park, plus a couple of extra bits. This walk features, amongst many other things, bubbling footblisters, 2 days of solid rain, an entire day being eaten alive by swarms of mosquitoes (I cannot explain the sheer horridness of this), climbing up precarious cliff face ladders, wind that would almost knockyou off your feet, crossing rivers all the while carrying and cooking all our food and worldly possessions. However, 5 days in, we climbed to the highest peak to observe the highlight of the trek, Grey Glacier from above, an amazing sight amazingly on the clearest day of the trek! Well worth the blood, sweat, bites, uncomfortable roll mats and porridge breakfasts!
Somehow, an idle conversation between Becky and another girl at a campsite basin, has turned into rumor as someone comes over to ask if i was the one who hadn´t slept for two whole nights (bit of an exaggeration) before making the final steep walk... What a legend, but in fact more to do with an inability to sleep on roll mats that any rock and roll excess i´m afraid.
We have covered 131.4 km in under 8 days and return to town to enjoy a steak feast that has acted like a carrot on a stick for the past 10 days.
Flickr link to ´Torres del Paine`album
